The present invention relates to a data entry unit such as a handy terminal.
With the advance of communication techniques, small-sized and portable type terminals and data entry units have come into general use. By means of computer systems, computers have been brought into use for inventory control of commodities, goods control operation in package delivery business and route sales and so forth, where data entry units in which a plurality of input data are stored temporarily and transmitted to a host computer collectively thereafter by means of a communication apparatus are being employed.
A keyboard is in general use as data entry means of a data entry unit of this type, but a bar code reader has also come into general use recently due to the spread of bar codes. A pen type in which the bar code is read by manually scanning is commonly used as a bar code reader provided on a portable data entry unit.
In the case of a pen type bar code reader such as used in a conventional example, however, a read scanning portion of the bar code reader is connected to the data entry unit body through a flexible cable, thus causing such a problem that a trouble of breakage of said cable is liable to occur while the data entry unit is carried.
In addition, there is such a defect that, since read scanning is performed manually a decoder circuit which interprets read signals becomes complicated because a circuit which copes with read scanning speed variation is required and so forth. As a result the circuit in the data entry unit body becomes large in size.